Position vs Material
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Do tactics and mating combinations like puzzles, soon your brain will start recognizing patterns and automatically see combinations.
You just need to learn the fundamentals of position. Sometimes I sacrifice the exchange to get a well outposted knight for a rook with nowhere to go. You should not run after your opponent's king every time you are even or up in material. Try for queenside attacks to gain positional plusses such as a minority attack. Although tactics puzzles are good for the chess player, you need to have a positional understanding to put you in those good tactical positions
That stat can be really irritating, since it makes it look like you played a terrible game, when really you could have played the fastest win for you but in more moves. For example you might miss a 3 or 4 move checkmate with your pieces because you instead decide to trap the king on his back rank and march a pawn up the board. This can be done in 5 seconds, whereas a "shorter" checkmate (which it would count you as having missed 2 or 3 times) would take much longer.
Odd thinking though, I played a solid game against Komodo the famous chess engine and had only 1 second per move, and I played materialistically to stop it from calculating so many things, less pieces was less chances of me getting surprised mated, I ended up being one move away from winning, so sometimes materialism is equal with position but it depends how you use it...
Here was me being materialistic towards a positional master
I'd always choose position over material.
Depends how aggressive your style is really.
I'd preferably choose position over material, like I'd trade a rook for a tactical position for like lets say a knight, or a bishop. Tbh, I prefer bis and knight over a rook.
How to break a bad habit? In nutshell, my gameplay can be described as "Command and Conqueor" My focus is on material and neutralizing my opponent by taking pieces off the board. Once I feel I control the board by removing his material, I go after the king. Problem is I pass up checkmate opputunities. I have chessmaster for the PC and at the end of the game one of the stats it provides is mate oppurtunities. This number is constantly in double digits.
Anyone have suggestions on how ot break this habit?